I have earned a single professional certification in my career. It’s not a Scrum certification. It’s not for AWS. In fact, I can’t even remember the name of the company that gave it to me. 30 minutes on Google came up dry.

Back in the late 1990s, I ran a small dial-up ISP from my parent’s house. And my upstream Internet connection was served over a 128kbps wireless link that traversed aproximately 15 miles (24km) to the nearest town. In an attempt to upgrade that to something faster, I purchased some early wireless ethernet equipment, (I think it may have been the first generation 802.11, or it may have even pre-802.11). And to learn to use that hardware, I drove to Nebraska for what I believe was a 2-day training on the basics of installing this early wireless equipment. And I earned some sort of certification that I’m sure would have sounded impressive to someone at the time.

But now I coach teams on improving software delivery. I advise professional Scrum masters regualrly. I teach people how to do Test-Driven Development, and improve the ways they write user stories.

But I’m not certified.

Why not?

Well. I don’t put any stock in these types of certifications.

Some go so far as to say that “If it can be certified, it’s not agile.” From a pragamatic standpoint, that may be true. But from a conceptual standpoint, I’m not sure. I mean, perhaps someone smart enough can come up with some way to train and certify people on iconoclasm, inventing new approaches to fit new situations, and all the things that true agility would entail.

But it wouldn’t be a 2-day course. It would probably look a lot more like a master’s degree.